Mystery on the Excelsior - Conclusion

[Bob]

Mystery on the Excelsior

Conclusion - It's Over!

The Excelsior finally touches down on the Alpha Centauri colony's spaceport, at last landing. Several Space Police officers board the ship and put Ezra into handcuffs while Alfie is removed by the Space Coroner.

"I can honestly say I have no recollection of the crimes I'm accused of." Ezra says.

"Tell it to the Space Judge." an officer says.

"You'll have plenty of time to recall those memories with an Amnesiagone dosage." Grace adds.

"But wait, didn't anyone help me? Who else are you going to arrest?"

"Yeah!" someone shouted from the crowd. "The questions hinted that other people helped, so who is it?"

"Clearly it's Gabriella!" Emily said. "Always being sneaky!"

"No, it had to have been Chef Noah!" Charlie added.

"It was Jack!"

"It was George!"

"Well, who was it?"

"I don't know if I can say for sure. The evidence we have against certain people is all circumstantial. All we know for sure is that Ezra was the murderer and that he may have been helped." Grace replied

"Guess we'll find out in a few moments, eh?" the officer added.

"Don't break the fourth wall." Grace said.

---

1) The motive - why was Alfie murdered?

Answer: Alfie was murdered by a technologies company that was eager to stop him from releasing his replicator product before they could. 

Correct Responses: Kristel, Waterbrick Down, Trekkie, Tariq j, Lord Duvors

2) The murderer - who murdered Alfie?

Ezra murdered Alfie with the teapot, first breaking it over his head and then stabbing him with a shard that had come off. 

Correct Responses: Darkdragon, Waterbrick Down, Trekkie

3) Did the murderer have any assistance, and if so, from who?

Ezra received help from Sophie Young, who provided the teapot without knowing who the murderer was. Arthur Allan also helped by cutting main power to the ship from engineering. 

Correct Responses: None (DD and WBD got it right for themselves obviously but they don't count) 

---

I must apologize that this game went on intolerably too long, to the point where I think it's singlehandedly killed interest in these types of games for quite some time. I originally wanted to host this a few months before I did, but it was delayed. By the time it came around to host it, work had started up again, and I could only check/reply to people during my planning period or when I got home, which slowed the game down considerably. I thought I would be able to host while working, but I bit off way more than I could chew. Mafia games you can sort of let run on their own as long as you check back every couple hours to update the vote count. Mystery games like this require constant host interaction. In hindsight, I should have known better. It got to the point where we were too far in and I didn't want to pause the game and have it end up in the "unfinished games" category. So I kept it going and eventually there were only a few regulars posting. I can't blame people for losing interest and it's my fault entirely for that, I didn't keep the game at a tight enough pacing. This game started back in September(!) but it feels like it's been going on for much longer than that.

I think people could tell that I was trying to hurry it along by a certain point. I severely underestimated the attention that a host needs to provide to mystery games. With that said, I did enjoy the stellar roleplay that people had and I did also like some of the private actions that people sent to me. Hinckley turned Gabriella into a psychopath, which wasn't planned but it did make it more interesting. Some people even thought Gabriella was behind it all somehow. Feel free to share your role PM's as well and discuss the game.

I think someone else needs to host something as soon as possible. 

[Waterbrick Down]

Thanks Bob for hosting!

I think you've already identified the negatives of the game, so I won't belabor the point about timing. From running games in Heroica, I know how hosting can be a huge responsibility and how easy it can be to bite off more than you can chew. Given the format, I'm not sure there was much else you could have done to speed things up given your circumstances without things feeling curt. All in all though the game was still fun even if it petered out at the end.

As for the game itself, I've never participated in a mystery game, so this was a first and I wasn't always sure what things were typical of the style and what were typical of this particular game. It wasn't always clear what sort of clues we were looking for and towards the end it sort of felt like we were simply checking boxes on a check-list instead of investigating. While that's certainly a valid strategy it kind of takes away the thrill. I think having events occur during the investigation would have helped breathe life into the scenario. When Lord Duvors entered the game, it introduced a new complication which was great. The fact that their was a ship tracking the excelsior, was certainly new information, but it wasn't something we could interact with in anyway so it was simply added to the list. Maybe it's part of the format as well, but having folks in on the murder (Arthur and Sophie) sort of throws a wrench in the investigation as they actively may prevent information that could solve the mystery from coming to light and while as a player I would have loved to be more cooperative with the investigation, I couldn't be sure if I'd have to sit out the rest of the game if the rest of the players threw me in the brig. It also meant that we couldn't rule out if the murderer was one of the players and with the clues being so cryptic, we'd have to depend upon them giving up backstory information, but unlike in a mafia game with voting we couldn't force someone to give up information if they didn't want to. A few questions:

How many clues did we miss?

Can you layout the timeline of the murder?

As for the rest of you, it was a pleasure spending role-playing with you and solving the mystery, though it never quite felt like a wholly collaborative experience. The early weeks were a lot of fun getting into character and I really appreciated the outlet. Gabby is still one of my favorites.  Seymour and his tiger were great additions and the political jabs by Charlotte hilarious. 

Roll PM:

Arthur Allan

You are Arthur Allan, the steward aboard the SS Excelsior. You have been working for Blue Star Cruises for almost a decade now, and were recently transferred onto the Excelsior, which is their flagship. The Excelsior is the only faster than light vessel in the company’s service, and as a result it is very expensive to operate. As a result, only the wealthy can manage to book passage aboard. You are the lone steward aboard the ship, as there is typically only about ten or so passengers onboard at any given time. 

Prior to joining the cruise company, you served in the United Earth Navy before being dishonorably discharged for striking a junior officer. You are also heavily in gambling debt back on Earth, which is partially why you take to the stars to avoid the loan sharks who could come after you. In order to try to make any money possible, you were given a payment of five million credits to ensure that the ship’s main power is switched off early into the voyage. You are not sure who has paid you and you are not sure why. It is likely in your best interests to not make any mention of this at all, as it would certainly cost you your career, but also likely land you in prison. 

As a steward, you have access to the crew quarters, the cargo bay, and the bridge. While engineering is not off-limits to you, you have no real reason to go there. You will, however, need to go into engineering to disable the ship. You should be able to do this without being detected.

Any further information that you may need will be passed on to you as the game progresses. If you have any questions about anything, please let me know!
 

Please submit any private actions or questions you wish to take in this thread.

[Bob]

13 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

How many clues did we miss?

Can you layout the timeline of the murder?

A few, for example the lack of fingerprints matching anyone else on the teapot and that Sophie had a pair of gloves in her room is the biggest one that I can think of. I think that you reached most of them. I don't believe Grace used her bicorder on the engineering panel that was sabotaged. If I remember right, Gabriella used her makeshift fingerprint kit on it. If the bicorder was used, since it was more sophisticated, it likely would have picked residual traces of Arthur using it.

As for the timeline of the murder, Arthur cut the ships power while Sophie placed the murder weapon outside of Alfie's door. It was all over very quickly. Ezra attempted to flee, but the sudden jostle of power being restored and the ship moving again caused a piece of luggage to come loose and fall on his head, knocking him unconscious. Darkdragon had the choice of using anything readily available as the murder weapon and she decided on a teapot, which was an interesting choice.

[Waterbrick Down]

1 hour ago, Bob said:

A few, for example the lack of fingerprints matching anyone else on the teapot and that Sophie had a pair of gloves in her room is the biggest one that I can think of. I think that you reached most of them. I don't believe Grace used her bicorder on the engineering panel that was sabotaged. If I remember right, Gabriella used her makeshift fingerprint kit on it. If the bicorder was used, since it was more sophisticated, it likely would have picked residual traces of Arthur using it.

As for the timeline of the murder, Arthur cut the ships power while Sophie placed the murder weapon outside of Alfie's door. It was all over very quickly. Ezra attempted to flee, but the sudden jostle of power being restored and the ship moving again caused a piece of luggage to come loose and fall on his head, knocking him unconscious. Darkdragon had the choice of using anything readily available as the murder weapon and she decided on a teapot, which was an interesting choice.

Thanks that helps. How did the shards end up in Jack Mallory's room? And what was with the burned pieces of paper in the housekeeping storage?

[Trekkie99]

Good game Bob! Sorry it got so quiet at times, but I definitely had fun for my first mystery game. The idea of Ezra having a accomplice never occurred to me for some reason so I unfortunately never went looking for one. 

[jimmynick]

Thanks for running the game Bob sorry I was not as active as I had meant to be, I've been distracted by work and life and cycling

[Tariq j]

Thanks for hosting Bob! It was my first mystery game as well and I had a lot of fun. There was some great role playing at the start. 

 

 

[Darkdragon]

Thanks for hosting. It really had such an amazing start!  I was mostly confused by the end and forgot to answer half the questions    I think the trouble was just that it went on so long, as you said. I appreciate the fact you didn't give up on the game though, sometimes life really tries to kick us in the ...face.

[Bob]

On 3/7/2021 at 4:52 PM, Waterbrick Down said:

Thanks that helps. How did the shards end up in Jack Mallory's room? And what was with the burned pieces of paper in the housekeeping storage?

I think Gabriella put them there if I remember right. The burned pieces of paper in housekeeping was a clue towards you - it would've been burned paper with routing information. 

On 3/7/2021 at 6:15 PM, Tariq j said:

Thanks for hosting Bob! It was my first mystery game as well and I had a lot of fun. There was some great role playing at the start. 

On 3/8/2021 at 2:49 PM, Darkdragon said:

Thanks for hosting. It really had such an amazing start!

The roleplaying at the start was stellar, probably a highlight of the game. 

[Duvors]

Hi, sorry for not posting earlier but I was called away in the middle of February and haven't had wi-fi access until yesterday.  I'm sorry to say that I was one of the people who sort of lost interest near the end despite otherwise enjoying myself.  In regards to the computer in engineering, I actually did want to go back and check it (albeit I intended to use the datapad to examine how the code had been tampered with) but the general sense of ennui that came over me towards the end meant I never got around to it.  Sorry.

[Hinckley]

I told you I didn't kill anyone.